Category: Life in these United States

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Life in these United States

Boxed Nasties and Kindness

This past year has been difficult; I won’t sugarcoat it. But, it’s also been a bit of a revelation. I was forced to face some things about myself that I’ve long ignored, though of late, I’d been far less successful than previously.

I’ve always been an emotionally sensitive, some might say fragile even, person. I didn’t need a therapist to tell me (but they did) that some of it, probably a lot of it, stemmed from my childhood. Adoption, two divorces (4 “mother figures”), and a family in near-constant worry over a son (my brother) who, at any moment, could and would do something almost unimaginable in the early 80s, tend to weigh on a kid.

In my case, I believe nature is partly to blame, but nurture more so because my emotional state evolved over time. I’ve always been independent; in fact, I prided myself on it. Once I left home, I never asked my family for anything–nor did I receive anything. I returned home a few times, but during the first leave I took to visit my family after joining the Air Force, my dad and step-mom announced they were divorcing. After that, there just didn’t seem like much to come home to. So I became stronger and more independent. I made my own decisions; saved my own money, and got a dog. I was good. At least, that’s what I told myself.

But there was always a simmering sadness just below the surface that bled through any time someone showed me kindness. I wouldn’t say that has caused problems, necessarily, but it has created situations where I’ve been unable to control my visible emotions in front of someone I should, like a manager.

The flip side of being that emotionally on-edge is that those situations indelibly lodge themselves in my memories and for those people whose kindness affected me, they remain some of my favorite people, whether they know it or not. To this day, decades later in some instances, I feel a fierce loyalty to them that they’ll never know.

Thinking about this, I’m reminded of the first time I became self-aware that I perhaps had some emotional turmoil. I’d just left Air Force Basic Training in Texas. We’d flown into Biloxi, MS, and caught the shuttle to my Tech School at Keesler Air Force Base.

Now, for this story to make sense, you have to understand something about Basic training: It’s six weeks of mental misery. Everything they can do to try and break you, they will do. Recruits are constantly yelled at and put down, and even when you’ve tried your hardest and done your best, they’ll tell you it wasn’t; that it was a piss-poor effort and you’re the sorrier for having even tried. At least in my experience, not a single word of comfort was ever offered by those in charge.

To reinforce a pending state of worry and constant fear, each recruit is required to carry around three small 4×6″ forms called DD316s, at all times. To be caught without three, even if you’d had one taken from you and not yet had a chance to return to the dorm and get another, was itself a violation, resulting in the generation of another DD316 black mark on your training.

The purpose of these forms was to provide a physical record of your screwups. Any Drill Instructor, at any time, could demand one from the recruit, typically in response to some misbehavior or failed instruction (e.g., improperly shined shoes), whether real or imagined. Although the exact number of collected DD316s that it took to get you “washed out” was never stated explicitly, the idea was that any recruit who generated enough of these forms would have to start Basic all over again. There was an unspoken acknowledgment among recruits that having to start Basic over was a non-starter, so either you made it the first time or you were “out.”

Suffice it to say, nothing you did was ever good enough even if you knew in your heart it was the best you could do. And every recruit had more than a few DD316s taken from them; that’s just the way it is. The program is designed to break those who are not strong enough, mentally.

I remember one evening about 2/3 through Basic. I was, at the time, Flight Leader and had three other Squad Leaders to help me. We were called for by our Drill Instructor and told to come to the bottom floor of the dormitories. Within minutes, the four of us arrived at the room we’d been instructed to visit. We knocked; the door was opened, and we four filed in quietly, unsure of why we’d been summoned.

The room was dimly lit and I immediately noticed four Drill Instructors in the room, some standing; others sitting. Immediately, I also heard someone crying. Over in the corner was one of our fellow recruits. He’d been missing all day and no one knew why. We’d all assumed he’d reported to the medical clinic and would return when he was cleared. Being July in Texas, heat sickness and “crotch rot” (severe blistering in your nether parts due to constant sweat and rubbing) was rampant.

But it quickly became clear this recruit was not physically ill. As he stood there crying–wailing even–two of the Drill Instructors stood around him yelling. They called him names, threatened to throw him out of Basic, and generally berated him mercilessly. We four Recruits were told that this particular Recruit was not mentally strong enough for the Air Force. And as we stood there, dumbfounded and frankly, unnerved, one of the Drill Instructors asked us, “Would you want him next to you in a foxhole? Would you want to trust your life to someone who can’t even handle being yelled at?”

The truth was, we wouldn’t want to. As bad as it sounded then and now, it was the truth. And at that moment, I realized that a lot of what we were enduring in Basic was a game. And it wasn’t. But, the winners were the ones who could last the longest. Since that time, I’ve worked hard to keep my feelings in check because the world can be a cruel place, and I wasn’t about to give it any more ammunition.

I’ve thought back on that episode many times over my life. I’ve wondered if it was real or staged. I’ve even wondered if it really happened or if maybe I made it up to help me get through boot camp. I’m confident it happened, but I’m also confident there was more going on there than we were told. Perhaps they’d found out this particular youth was an illegal. I don’t know. His last name was common to the Philippines and it was clear he wasn’t from the heartland of the U.S.

In the end, nearly all of us passed our tests and survived Basic, though I didn’t score nearly as well on my final graded exam as I’d expected. But even after I graduated, after packing up my meager belongings and heading to the bus that would take us to the airport along with my fellow Airmen, did we get a kind word from our Drill Instructor? A parting comment about how proud he was of us, perhaps? No. Instead, he stood at the door to the bus and as each Airman boarded, he punched us on the arm.

Go figure.

So as I arrived at my next temporary duty station in Mississippi, I had no expectation of it being any different. Still pretty much a young, dumb kid, I’d resigned myself to the fact that this was my new life, for better or worse, and there was nothing I could do but try to get through it. But, at least I was on my own and self-sufficient. That was worth something.

There were approximately six of us new recruits just out of Basic on the plane arriving together and heading to Keesler where we would train for anywhere from 2-9 months for our next job in the Air Force. A few of us knew each other, but not all. We found and boarded the shuttle, each quietly staring out the window, afraid to say anything or look at anyone lest we draw negative attention. It was September; raining, and humid as it always is from April through October in the South.

Getting off the bus, I grabbed my green duffle and was met by a youngish, female Airman. Probably in her early 30s, she had a kind face and seemed completely non-threatening. Smiling, she offered a “Welcome” and beckoned for us to follow her inside where we were instructed to drop our bags and take a seat in a small room with schoolroom-style desks.

After introducing herself, she began telling us what we would be doing that day–mostly paperwork– before getting our room assignments and instructions for starting our first day of class. I remember sitting there and looking around the room, mentally categorizing what I might be called on to do or say so I’d be prepared and not get in trouble for saying something dumb.

After some time, she mentioned something about lunch, saying they were prepared meals that come in a box. She joked that everyone called them, “Boxed Nasties” and I remember thinking that this was the first bit of non-crude humor I’d heard in more than a month and a half. It was also the first inkling I had that maybe, just maybe, things were going to be a little less terrible.

As we sat and ate, she tried to goad us into conversation but it was clear we were all still very shellshocked and distrustful. In Basic, recruits weren’t allowed to address anyone not a recruit unless or until you were addressed first. But, as the minutes passed and it became more apparent she wasn’t going to start yelling and no one was going to come in banging on a garbage can and shining flashlights in our eyes, we all began to loosen up and talk.

I don’t remember who, but one of us told her how strange it felt being there and her being “nice.” She laughed and said it’s normal and that everyone who arrives there after Basic feels the same. She assured us the “Basic Experience” was over and Tech School was going to be a lot more like the regular Air Force. There would still be things we were required to do, but the days of being fearful of everything and everyone was over.

Somehow, I was able to control my emotions that day, but inside I was a mess. I wanted to melt out of my chair, scooch over into a corner, and just ball my eyes out. I didn’t, but I wanted to. And the strange thing is, I’d never felt that way before. Certainly never at home. It was almost as if now that I was on my own, and knowing full well that my family couldn’t come help–or hurt–me, it was OK to “feel.”

In the years since, I’ve learned a great deal both about myself, and my childhood. Some things I knew; some I didn’t. And some things, I’m sure I just repressed. It’s taken an emotional toll that I hadn’t fully realized until the last few years, and only even more recently did I seek out help.

I’m happy to say that I’m doing much better. Truth be told, I haven’t felt this “even” in decades. It’s unfortunate it took me this long to seek help because I’m confident that some of the decisions in my life that have been the most impactful–usually negatively in some way–were in no small part influenced by a mind that I can only look back at now and question.

We Gen-Xers are an independent lot. We pride ourselves on having survived childhoods that saw some of the most impactful societal change in the last 100 years. But, the truth is, even the strongest of us need help sometimes. If anything I’ve written here rings a bell, I urge you to find someone to talk to. Get some help, or at least find out if you need it. If a first step would be talking with someone a little less “professional,” my email’s always available.

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Side Hustles and Morality in the 80s

Back in the 80s, it was a little lean around my house. I didn’t realize it then, but I’m pretty sure my father was out of work a good bit of the decade. He’d never gotten a degree, but he was very smart and had a knack for working with machines and electrical things so he’d been fairly successful just based on prior experience. My new stepmom had not yet started working, so we were solely reliant on my father’s salary–and maybe a little “state support” if you know what I mean.

I’m not certain where all of our money came from that decade, but I vividly remember my stepmother collecting green stamps and pasting them in a booklet and using them for groceries. I assumed they were a local store promotion, but in retrospect, maybe that’s what food-stamps looked like in Alabama during Carter’s presidency.

To make ends meet, my parents tried a lot of different side hustles, some more successful than others. For instance, my father installed–and sold–a hot-water-heater timer that automatically turned the water heater off during non-peak hours. This little doo-dad was mechanical and I remember that, as a seven-year-old, it was extremely difficult to “flip the switch” on it when you needed to turn it on out-of-hours. I can remember coming home late of a night from being out of town and needing hot water. I’d have to go through the garage, climb up on a table and trip the switch. And every time I did it, for some reason I expected to get shocked. I don’t know why…

My father tried to get into dog-breeding once, as well. We had a beautiful Doberman female. After successfully breeding her, she had a litter of 9 pups and promptly developed mastitis, which quickly put an end to any future breeding endeavors.

But perhaps my folks’ most enduring moneymaker was a plastic sign-making business. Plastic was a fairly novel thing then. And being able to make signs out of plastic, versus metal or some other material, was much less expensive. ‘

There were two sides to the hustle; one involved engraving those plastic nameplates that go on office doors or that sit in attractive brass stands on desks. It involved taking a piece of plastic that looked like wood of whatever color the customer wanted, and engraving names and titles on them. It was a fascinating process involving a long tracing and engraving mechanism. I was too young to work this machine, but my brother sometimes did. For my part, once the signs were engraved, I used the bevelor to smooth out the edges. It was about as difficult as using a knife sharpener, so even a 10-year-old could do it.

Our other “business” consisted of a giant vacuum molding machine and a hundred thin sheets of different colored plastic, each approximately 4′ x 4′. With this, you could create just about any kind of sign as long as you had the mold or template. Whomever we purchased the equipment from also provided a large catalog of rubber molds you could purchase for use.

The actual sign-making process was fascinating to me, even then. Once you selected your rubber sign mold, you put it on the bottom of the machine. Above that, you placed your sheet of plastic–usually white. Once you closed the lid and flipped a switch, the plastic would begin heating up. And this is where it got tricky..and hot! Everything was manual then; there were no electronic dials or automation, so you’d have to squat down and watch the plastic slowly heat, breathing in hot plastic fumes all the while. When it got to the point where the plastic was so hot that it was started to droop down in the middle due to gravity, you had to very quickly do the following: shut off the heater, flip on the vacuum, and then push the handle that lowered the plastic onto the rubber mold. The drama was palpable and the noise from the vacuum was like a Harley Davidson thundering through the garage and every time we did it, my heart would thump in my chest and I felt like I was having a mini panic attack! But if you did everything correctly, almost as soon as you lowered the shelf onto the plastic, the vacuum sucked the hot plastic over the mold, and voila! You had your sign. You then reversed all your switches and louvers and you were done.

Though my brother was old enough to help make the engraved signs for doors and desks, I was too young to do much of anything. Still, I used to love watching my parents work. Crouched down on my heels waiting for the plastic to heat to the point where it sagged almost to the breaking point was more fun than watching date trainwrecks on social media. And then that moment when the plastic was sufficiently heated and they flipped the vacuum switch and lowered the plastic onto the rubber mold and the big WOOOSHING sound filled the room….ah, it was exhilarating!

Of course, once you had the mold you needed for you signs you could then turn around and create as many of that type of sign as you wanted. Most of the templates were for things you might attach to your vehicle using magnetic tape, such as “For Sale” signs, or other common things like “Plumber” or “Electrician.” My brother and I used to love to play with the rubber molds. There was something really cool about a floppy, soft, rubbery thing that you could bend and twist. For us, it was something new and interesting, and therefore, something our parents didn’t want us messing with.

Not long after my parents took possession of all of the equipment, my brother and I snuck into the garage to look through the catalog. I remember thumbing through it and coming on a section of, what was then, very racy sign mold templates. I don’t know why, but one, in particular, struck me and it has stuck with me all these years. It was a nut and bolt, each with human characteristics–a face, arms, and legs–and the bolt was behind the nut, presumably about to screw itself into the nut and the caption on it read, “Not without a washer!”

I think my brother had to explain it to me at first, but once I understood what the sign inferred, I was dumbfounded that my parents would be involved in a business where they might make such a sign. I mean, we weren’t terribly religious then, but there was certainly never any sexual innuendo bantered around the house. Looking back, I still can’t imagine what business scenario might require such a sign. Maybe at a strip-club, or as a joke in a mechanic’s shop?

I searched for this design and found several versions of it in random places, like this one on Etsy:

The one we could order wasn’t quite like this, but the gist is the same. Scandalous, no?

Considering what all happened in the 70s, this was probably pretty tame for most adults; but for a kid, pure magic!

I don’t think I ever looked at my parents the same after that. Not that they ever made a sign like this, to my knowledge, but the idea that they were involved in something where this was even a consideration, changed how I viewed them.

As I got older, my parents became more involved in church and got more “religious.” Our involvement in the church waxed and waned for various reasons, but it struck me that despite whatever we choose to practice in our personal lives, just existing in this world sometimes requires a certain “moral flexibility” to steal a phrase from “Grosse Point Blank.” I guess the alternative is to draw a line in the sand and say, “This is not something I’m willing to bend on,” but then, we’ve seen how well that has worked out for many, especially of late.

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A Dust Pan for Dad – A Fish Out of Water Story

The other day I was picking up a few items at the grocery store, walking through the produce aisle, selecting some bell peppers here, a few (overly) expensive mangos there. Coming towards me was a middle-aged man and what appeared to be his two children–a boy and a girl. Nothing unusual in that. If anything, it’s always good to see the continued debunking of the media myth that men don’t contribute in the home.

As I selected a few lemons, I couldn’t help but notice the father. Slumped over his cart as he was, it was clear he wasn’t entirely comfortable in whatever “this” role was, probably a new one for him. Seeing that, I started paying a bit closer attention to the situation surrounding him and his children.

I caught one of the kids talking about the apples and I heard the man say something like, “But do we really need them?”

I didn’t catch the rest; probably because I was immediately swept away into a memory from my childhood. One that included another middle-aged man–my father–also with his child–me–and also clearly not entirely in his element.

I was probably 13. After 11 years of what seemed to be a stable, if perhaps uneventful, marriage, my stepmom announced she wanted to separate from my father for a while. As usual, my father seemed caught completely unaware, a trend that he appeared to have ignored much of his life. But, it being the 80s and divorce trends on a steep trajectory upwards, while I wasn’t unfamiliar with divorce, I didn’t know what a “separation” meant and I found myself at a complete loss as to how we were going to make it without her at home.

Even at that young age, I recognized that it was very selfish of me to immediately jump to concerns of self when my parents were clearly having problems. But the last time my father had to care for me (and my brother at the time) by himself, he was not good at it and it only last about a year because he quickly met someone who stepped in and took over everyday home-making.

At 13, I needed little supervision. I got myself up in the mornings; made my own breakfast and got myself out the door with no intervention from my parents. Dad was gone to work long before I even got up and my step-mother stayed in her room getting ready for work until after I left.

My father was not a “household chore” kind of guy. He was a builder. Tell him something needed fixing and he was on it. Tell him he needed to cook dinner, however, and he was at a total loss unless it meant cutting up and boiling some vegetables.

I very clearly remember our first trip to the grocery store. It had probably been two weeks since my stepmother had packed up her things and moved out. She had rented, and furnished, a nice apartment about 30 minutes away. Any hopes I had that her moving out was just a temporary thing were dashed the first weekend I spent at her place. I remember looking around thinking, “She has every piece of furniture someone who is single would have.” It didn’t occur to me then that she had clearly been planning this, if not actively setting it in motion without anyone knowing it, for quite some time and was planning on it lasting more than a few days. I also saw a pack of cigarettes sticking out of her purse. So far as I knew, both she and my father had quit smoking years ago, so this was (also) a new development.

But, “visiting” your parent is awkward. There I was, a pre-teen and a middle-aged step-parent stuck inside a nondescript apartment for two days. No money. Nothing to do really. And frankly, if we were at home, we wouldn’t have much day-to-day interaction anyway, so suddenly being forced to interact just because it’s “your weekend” made for some awkward moments. I couldn’t wait for the weekend to end.

Back at home; after a couple of weeks of my having to come up with meal ideas for my father and me, not to mention that I’d not had anything to pack for my school lunch in days, a grocery-run was unavoidable and so I broached the subject with my father one Saturday morning. He was not enthused.

Now, I had no idea of my parents’ financial situation; not really. We had a comfortable house, but there were little things that led me to believe we weren’t doing all that well. So, I was very cognizant of money. Much like the children of the Great Depression, still today I’m a saver “just in case” and I’m confident much of my tendencies stem from the lean times of my youth when I spent my school lunch period pretending to study in the library so I didn’t have to explain to my friends that I wasn’t eating because my parents always “forgot” to give me any lunch money. And other small financial crises.

We drove to the store together. I’d shopped with my stepmother enough to know the drill. I grabbed a cart and headed right. In truth, I don’t remember much about the actual grocery store, but one particular selection impressed itself in my memories, again further cementing the fact that money was tight and this whole “on our own” thing was not going to be easy.

With “mom” gone, I had picked up the bulk of the housekeeping duties. I lightly cooked and cleaned up the kitchen. I dry-mopped the downstairs floors and vacuumed the carpets in all but my parents’ room. I did our laundry. In short, I did most of the housework.

I remember that the dustpan we had, had seen better days. The edge was chipped and dulled and it was difficult to get fine dirt and debris into it and so as we passed the aisle with household cleaning supplies, I told my father we needed a new dustpan. Of all the things we needed, why a dustpan? It’s one of those things. One of those battles upon whose hill you know you will die on while defending. But it needed to be done.

The dustpan selection ran the gamut from a super-cheap aluminum pan, similar to the crap-tastic plastic one we currently had, to a more expensive glossy white plastic unit with a small brush attachment. I picked up the latter and my father immediately said, “Why do we need that one? This other one (the cheaper alternative) is just fine.”

l remember making the argument that the cheap one is just going to get brittle and break like the one we already had, so we should buy the more expensive, but durable, one. I remember the look on my father’s face before he put the dustpan in our cart. For a brief moment, a pained expression passed over his eyes. I remember seeing him about to argue and then immediately change his mind. And I remember the resignation that fixed itself on his expression as he placed the shiny, white dustpan with the attachable broom into the cart.

That day, upon that hill, I’d won and he’d given up. Maybe that was why my step-mom left. Maybe at some point, he got tired of fighting and just stopped trying, or caring. And I guess she did too.

Like the dad in my recent shopping experience, my father was just as uncomfortable playing the homemaker. Back in the present, while watching the dad at the grocery, I experienced a momentary pang of empathy for what he was having to deal with. Whatever situation led to him being there, he was doing what he needed to do despite his inexperience and discomfort. For that, I gave him credit. Maybe, like my father from long ago, he too was going through something in his relationship. Or maybe his wife just had other plans that day and asked him to do this thing he didn’t normally do. I hope for his kids’ sake that’s what it was.

I don’t know what all happened between my father and stepmother back then. She did eventually come home, but it was six months or more later. When I graduated from high school and joined the Air Force, less than a year later my step-mother divorced my father, and once again, he claimed complete ignorance of any issues and was completely taken by surprise by the whole thing.

She will tell you she divorced because he ignored her despite her trying everything to get him to pay attention to her. If the never-opened bottle of Jack Daniels that sat in the back of their closet my entire teen years, or the nearly-pristine, lone Playboy I found in the back of my father’s dresser drawer, which surely my step-mother knew about, are any indication of the lengths she went to, none of it worked.

My dad was many things. And he was NOT many things. But of this about him I will admit, he was loyal. Perhaps too loyal. Once he committed to something, it was a done deal, for better or for worse. At 40, he adopted two young boys–one with documented mental issues–and when he and his young wife, who was 11 years his junior, divorced a few years later, he took us with him and did the best he knew how.

But my father’s Achilles’ was women. So far as I can tell, he never told a woman in need, “No.” The bigger the hard-luck story, the harder he pursued them. Lord knows I wish he hadn’t. I’ll never stop regretting the last time he couldn’t stop himself from getting involved, and never walking away, even as the relationship cost him quite literally everything. But he was loyal.

Not too long after his death, we found out something that turned everything we thought we knew about my father on its ear. And the more I think about it, perhaps that is the reason he turned out to be so loyal later in life.

Maybe that’s all any of us can or should ever try to be. Even when life goes sideways and things aren’t ideal, maybe the best you can be remembered for is having always being there for the people who needed you most. Even if it ends up costing you your own happiness.

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Finding Your Calling

Growing up, my dad never sat still. Or if he did, it was only because he needed to be sitting down so he could finish sketching out the dimensions of his latest obsession. When we were building our house in Semmes, even before the house foundation was started, he’d built a shed for his tools. Later, that shed would become more of a storage unit than a shop, but I believe he would have spent more hours there than in the house if he knew he wouldn’t catch hell for ignoring the family.

When my dad got sick back in 2018, we all put on a brave face and told ourselves that he could get better. He had a great bunch of doctors and nurses and for a man in his early 80s, he was amazingly spry and active. But, deep down, I think we all knew the odds were against him.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more like him. Despite my being adopted, his “always stay busy” attitude, coupled with an innate need to create, are alive and well in me. If nothing else, of that I think he’d be proud. And I too have my own shop-slash-storage unit, but unlike his, mine is in the basement of my house and habitable throughout the year, impervious as it is to the heat of summer and the frigidity of the winter months. There are also a lot fewer cockroaches, which is nice.

Forty years later, I can tell you almost exactly how many steps it was from the door of my dad’s shed to his toolbox; I made the trip enough times. I can also tell you which drawer of my dad’s old toolbox he kept the screwdrivers in. It was the first drawer. Beneath that, his pliers. Beneath that, his electrical tools, such as his meters and soldering iron. I know because I organized my own toolbox the same way. If it works, and you remember what’s where because you had to “go fetch” tools from it a thousand times while working with your dad, why change it? Most of the memories I have of my dad involve some kind of work–either us working together, or me doing something he’d tasked me with. So, to say that I have a more than passing interest in preserving those memories, is a fair statement.

As dad got sicker–and my relationship with his girlfriend followed suit–I realized that unless I took preemptive action, when he passed, I wasn’t going to get any of these things. I even told him once that I would be surprised if she even let me in the house after he was gone, to which he agreed. Most of his “things” I couldn’t have cared less about; but, his tools were something else entirely. I grew up using those tools. I watched my father build our house and two dog houses with them. I can still remember trying to anticipate where he needed the flashlight or which screwdriver or pair of plyers he’d need next. I can still remember how dark it got on us the night he helped me rig up my car stereo amp (that was the days before they had prebuilt harnesses). And I can still feel the smooth surety of the hickory handle of that old ax I swung a million times while clearing out the back-five acres behind the house (btw – If you haven’t read that story, here you go). I have a million memories of those times working with him and I couldn’t stand the thought of losing it all to his girlfriend’s early-onset dementia and her paranoid belief that I was trying to take my father away from her.

And to be fair, my father had told me that he wanted me to come up and take some things back home. I think he too realized the truth about his partner, but was just too sick to care to do anything about it. So one Saturday morning, I drove up to his home in Mills River, NC and we went through some of his old tools. I didn’t take much really, just some odds and ends hand tools and some fishing poles. In truth, I left 10x as much as I took home with me. He’d become a bit of a packrat in his old age; finally able to afford the tools he’d longed for in his youth. And so, of a weekend, he would visit garage sales and pick up random tools, even if he had two or three of the same thing at home already.

I think we both understood the finality of my coming up to go through his tools. Up to that point, I would never have even broached the idea of him sharing some of his handyman largess with me. It would have been like asking to drive another man’s motorcycle–you just don’t do it. But as he so bluntly put it that warm Saturday morning, “I can’t keep up this place like I used to. I don’t have any need for most of this stuff now. I want you to have it.”

I made the trip in one day. I refused to stay in the house with his partner and, while her northern upbringing wouldn’t allow her to say it out loud, it was clear I wasn’t welcome anyway. He would pass about two and a half months later. It was a messy death–misunderstood and incomprehensible–like much of his life was to those around him.

His tools now reside in my own matching red and black Craftsman toolbox. His old claw hammer with the dark brown wooden handle, made nigh impermeable from decades of sweat and heat, now hangs from a nail inside my shop over the door. It watches over me with a critical eye, a reminder of a legacy of an insatiable desire to tear down and build anew, and a need to create from nothing. Every time I see it I’m reminded of how short my own accomplishments have fallen compared to his.

At 48, I still have a lot of good years ahead of me; though maybe not as many as I like to think. My manual labor Saturdays end earlier and my joints ache more every year. All of these tools and memories I have will one day be someone else’s to make decisions about. And as it stands now, none of my own kids seem headed in my “handy” direction, so it will probably be the Estate Sale for most of my stuff; a headache for my wife and children. They will disperse it to someone else, never understanding how much I loved the ache and bone-tiredness resulting from many a Saturday and weeknight’s work.

All of this busy-ness is fleeting. Those projects I skipped soccer matches to finish, which seemed so important then, will be nothing more than part of an aggregate dollar amount on a real-estate sales contract when I’m gone–if I’m lucky I’ll be gone.

But the work made my dad happy, and when I’m busily working on a project, particularly one that will improve our house or the yard, I’m at my happiest. Maybe that’s all any of us can really ask for once we’ve had children of our own and our reason for existence changes from satisfying self, to providing for others. In many ways, my little projects offer a bit of both.

Towards the end, my dad expressed regrets. Regrets about the way he raised me, the things he said and did, or didn’t. He never talked specifics, but I always figured he knew how hard on me he was. There was only ever one way to do something–his way. There was no “down time” and had it not been for my step-mom, there would have never been anything but school and work, which was how he was raised, as was his father before him.

I’ve probably gone the opposite direction with my own kids and I wonder if it’s too late now to course-correct. Only time will tell, I suppose. But, if any of them find their inner handy-person calling late in life, I hope my tools–and memories–are still here for them.